Might & Magic X is Okay

The new year starts off with a ton of work. No surprise there - what with games such as The Elder Scrolls Online going into beta and everything. And while I'm not at liberty to say whether or not I'm taking part in it, the whole thing finally gave me an idea for an article I could send in to cracked.com - 'X things you didn't know about being a freelance games critic'.

While it is true that my life mainly consists of pants-free gaming bliss, there are a few hidden catches, such as having to spend a significant amount of time playing (and usually finishing) games you don't particularly care about or even hate. What's worse, this job can make you hate your favourite games. Imagine you're seriously looking forward to some new MMO. And then you get invited to play it at some early press preview event through the job. You see character creation, the noob zones, tutorials and all that. Then you join an early beta. And another one. Then the headstart event. Characters usually get deleted from one preview event to another, so you start over a lot. By the time the game actually goes live, there's a pretty good chance you're very tired of the game's first half.

At least you can go a bit crazy in character creation

But release is when the real fun starts. You might be told to play your least favourite class in your least favourite spec - because freelancers don't always get to choose, so you have to play what nobody else wanted. To the maximum level. Within a single week, which means 8-12 hour gaming sessions every day. Once the job is finally over, you'll be so sick and tired of the game, you may not even want to roll the kind of character you originally intended to play anymore. But since you're now an expert at the game, you'll be asked to spend the next few months writing more class guides, dungeon guides, guides about new content and so forth. Whilst constantly leveling and upgrading that one character you never cared about, but had been forced to play for work. Whee!

"Alright, here's your character. We need you to spec into diplomacy and decorative cake frosting."

There's also the whole looking like a complete dick thing when reviewing awful games. Give a shitty game a shitty rating and the PR guy you've spent the last few weeks chatting with might lose his job. Take pity and give it a good rating and lose readers and credibility. You can't win.
Of course it isn't all bad. It absolutely made my day when a bunch of readers recognized me while I was out shopping and they totally lost their shit. Too bad I'm in a different country now and nobody knows me over here. I love the attention!

In other news, Might & Magic X: Legacy

Xeen reference FTW!

This game is exactly what I need right now. I've been craving some old school RPG fun where I get to create a whole party of adventurers, rather than just a single guy. And Legacy is pretty good. It's too cheap and broken to be great, but it's still decent. By "cheap" I'm really referring to the weird mophile phone app engine they've used to create this game. It lags, stutters, takes eons to load and it looks a bit weak. I'm also referring to the ancient public domain sound effects, which I've been hearing in cheap games for the past decade or so. There's "generic bird noise #38", which has been used in browser games since the first day browser games had sound. There's "shopkeeper clearing his throat" every eight seconds, which I've first heard in Rage of Mages 2. There's "generic fart noise #627" in town (why??), which has already been used in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail pc game roughly 20 years ago. They're also using some stuff from Might & Magic VI, such as the pause/turn-based mode sound effect when you level up and finish quests. Weird.

Only when you're really good at being a wolf can you become an elite wolf

Sadly, each of the four races only have two different faces per gender in character creation (two human dudes, two human girls, two elf boys, two elf girls, etc.) and there are no more gnomes or halflings. And the elves are generic high fantasy. Anyone remember the elves from parts 4 and 5?

Elves.

In case you're wondering about some of the facial expressions - Might & Magic features negative status effects such as depression, insanity and broken-heartedness.
Oh well. This isn't Xeen anymore and the elves are the same fair-haired skinny chicks you see in every fantasy game ever.

The game actually feels and plays a lot like Xeen, which is good, because it's supposed to. Unfortunately, they've also added some stuff from the newer games of the series. You can only create four instead of six guys (boo!), skill trainers are scattered all over the world and their locations need to be memorized/googled all the fucking time (BOO! Hissss!). But the strategic battles are great, the dungeons are really fun and there are some old school riddles here and there, most of which aren't overly difficult.

Get your mind out of the gutter, you!

Did you know monitor lizards enjoy climbing? I wouldn't say they're very good at it, but that doesn't seem to stop them.

He looks pretty awkward when he does that - and it usually ends with him falling on his face. But he no longer needs a lift when he wants to get back in his tank, which is a good thing, I suppose.

Hugo appears to dream when he's asleep. Fascinating stuff. If you own a cat or a dog, then you probably know that they do some weird shit in their sleep. My cat chews in her sleep. Must be dreaming about food or something. My family's dog would twitch, sleep-run and howl in its sleep. Nothing as spectacular as this, though:

Our lizard doesn't get this dramatic, but he bounces around a lot and makes little coughing noises. Not all the time. Maybe once a month or so and he's not "coughing" when he's awake, so there's really no need to worry. I wonder what reptiles dream about.

I have this recurring dream where I visit my family in Germany or my parents come over here to visit me. When I visit them it's usually at some new place they've just moved in to and everything is fine. Figures. Because nothing is fine with them while I'm awake. They split up years ago, my stepmother has moved on (new guy) and my dad talks about how they're "best friends" now. My brother tells me it's all bullshit and he's never gonna get over it. Messy stuff. Haven't seen my family since I moved to the UK nearly four years ago, one 3 hour visit from my brother aside. They're not coming here, I'm not going to Germany. I'm not sure why my subconscious wants them all back together and happy again. That family was never happy. There were some good moments, of course, however rare they might have been. And a whole lot of crap. Brain, can you stop dreaming about that now? That's be great, thanks.

-Cat